| Abstract: | This review gives information of the distribution of alkaloids, carbohydrates, lipids, essential oils, diterpenoids, iridoids, flavonoids, and pigments in plants of the genusStachys L. (fam. Lamiaceae). It has been shown that the genusStachys is of interest for researchers as a source of biologically active substances of various classes which are responsible for the broad spectrum of pharmaceutical-therapeutic action of plants of this genus and drugs prepared from them. Characteristic for these plants is a low content of saturated fatty acids in the seed lipids and, in the epigeal part, of essential oils, an accumulation of iridoids of the aucubin type, and the fact that all the flavone derivatives present have a large number of substituents in ring A of the flavone nucleus. This indicates the antiquity and phylogenetic primitiveness of theStachys genus. The results of chemical and pharmacological-therapeutic studies of plants of theStachys genus growing on the territory of the former USSR are given. Literature sources up to and including 1991 have been used.Division of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chernogolovka, fax 2926511 - BOX 18777; and Tashkent State University, fax 462472. Translated from Khimiya Prirodnykh Soedinenii, No. 6, pp. 699–709, November–December, 1994. |
